Glorious and Depraved (1)

There is social anthropology (study of human behavior), cultural anthropology (study of human cultural meanings, norms and values), linguistic anthropology (study of human languages), and biological or physical anthropology (study of human biological development). What about biblical anthropology, the “biblical portrait of human beings, male and female” (Holman Bible Dictionary), “the study of man as understood primarily from Scripture” (Bible.org), “who we are in relation to God” (churchmouse2017)?

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mortals that you concentrate on them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3,4)

David asks God the anthropological question, who are we and why do You care, and answers it biblically:

⁵ You have made them a little lower than elohim and crowned them with glory and honor. ⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: ⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, ⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

David is doing a little biblical anthropology, referring clearly to the book of Genesis, where God blesses newly created mankind and charges them with subduing the earth. But where does he get the idea of mankind being a little lower than elohim, and what does he mean by elohim? Is he saying mankind is a little lower than God (Elohim), or than the supernatural beings called elohim or gods (Judges 11:24; 1 Kings 11:33; Deuteronomy 32:17), or angels, who might be classed as part of that group called elohim or gods? Whichever he means, he is speaking of humans as being “crowned with glory and honor,” terms usually reserved for God alone.

Mankind is glorious!

But this same David, king of Israel, will in another of his psalms or songs of worship, say of himself,

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Psalm 51:5)

And he is not talking about his being an illegitimately born child. He is speaking about his penchant for sin even from birth.

Mankind is depraved!

David’s biblical anthropology sees mankind from both perspectives. There is something wonderful and glorious and beautiful and powerful about humans, and there is something dark and rebellious and wicked and weak about humans. As true as it is that we are glorious, it is equally true that we are depraved. To teach the one and not the other is to fail at biblical anthropology.